Light In Your Window
by Hel-Lokisdotter
Summary: -I was riding through the darkness, and I thought I had forgotten your face- Faramir muses on what has come before. Short and sweet; a FaramirxEowyn oneshot.


**A/N:** I actually wrote this one... ooh, way back. Way back, as in like a year ago. I'm clearing out my documents at the moment, so you might see a lot of this old stuff.  
I'm still proud of it, though. A bit purple, maybe, a bit flowery, but I like it anyway. ^.~

**Light in Your Window**

I was riding through the darkness, and I thought I had forgotten your face.

So long I have been away. So long away from you. And I ride back now towards Minas Tirith, with my heart rising in my chest, to see you again. And there was a moment when I thought I had forgotten your face.

Before I knew you, love, what then? What of the last time I rode this path, my horse straining under me, my blood pumping in my ears? What of that time, so few weeks since? So many torturous nights ago?

I rode then through a darkness as complete as any night, with the clash of battle about me and the roar of the army on the battlements. I rode for Gondor, for my father, for my brother who fell before his time. I rode to bring the light back to Arda, then. To stand against the powers that threatened to consume all.

I rode through the darkness and the chaos, aiming myself for the light.

And now it occurs to me that my life has never been any other way.

There was the chaos and the darkness of my birth, fighting my way outwards into the light of a new life. Then, I did not know, did not understand. But there was my brother, always, to guide me through the darkness of my own confusion; my brother, always, to add to it. Boromir was my light in those dark times, and shone so brightly that I was blinded by it, so that I no longer realised that I walked in darkness. And my father, too; my father's admiration and my father's love, that was always the beacon that I fought towards. Unreachable and untouchable, his love cankered with the darkness of resentment. Even in that light, still I struggled through the darkness and the chaos, as all of us do.

Worse darkness reached me; the darkness of my dream. The foreboding blackness, and the patterns of chaos within it; all the screaming and the roaring and the thudding of my own heart in my ears, so that I curled up beneath my blankets, and wept like a woman. And above it all, that voice, booming in my mind, that I could not ignore. It seemed a light, but it only shrouded my very certainty in shadow.

When Boromir left, then too I wept. I would not tell you this, love. I am weak. I am but a man. But truth is more than ought else, they say, and those that say so speak truly. I must tell this truth, if only to myself.

And when my brother left me, I wept. Not for the loss of adventure, for, though I wished I had been the one to go, it was less that which galled. More for fear, fear that in the long, shadowed road between Imladris and Ithilien, one of us would come to harm. Ah, I wish now that I had not thought such things! Though I know I am a fool for thinking it, still it seems my fault, as though I doomed him by my thoughts of his doom.

The darkness in my heart thickened when I saw him pass, for the light was gone. And with the light of hope, fell the light of day. It seemed so well suited. So right for what seemed like a darkening of all.

The darkness I felt was the darkness of despair, and truly, I could not believe that we could hold out forever against the Enemy, the armies of his chaos and his darkness massing in the East.

And the darkness of death – that, too, I felt upon me. Even when the flames drew close, even when the light was near, still it was darkness, and chaos. I could hear voices - the voices, I now guess, of my father and his men, of Mithrandir and the Halfling with him – but, though I fought through the darkness towards them, straining to listen, I did not hear what it was they said. Just a blur. A buzz of voices, like the buzz of flies after a battle. Death and darkness and doom – I have tasted my share of them all, and the doom laid on me was that I was destined ever to walk among those three.

Or so I thought.

I surfaced from that darkness, did I not? And to a changing world.

And to you.

Against the darkness of my skin and my hair and my soul, you were so bright. Like my honour, before it was stained by the death of my brother – a death I helped to cause. Like my blade, before it ran with the blood of a thousand accursed orcs. Like a candle in a storm, flickering and fading, but never dying. You were like me, love. Buffeted by the winds of fate, our light beginning to fade in the darkness of a doom we laid upon ourselves… like candles in a storm.

Like the storm I ride through now, my horse plunging into the blackness, my hair whipped around my face by the howling gale. But Minas Tirith is close, now, and I know the darkness will not go on for long. The rain hurls itself at my face like a thousand tiny stones, and I am smiling. Laughing. Happy. The darkness will not go on forever, and I know that home is waiting – a fire, a drink, a blanket and a meal, to warm my bones. There, I will bind my wounds. There, I will sleep. There, I will rest, out of the storm and the darkness and the chaos. And you will be there, resting there beside me.

I held you close, and told you that I loved you. I kissed your lips, and you were so beautiful.

I asked you what you feared, and you said a cage.

I asked you what you wanted, and you said...

You said freedom.

There is a light in your window, and it is guiding me home.


End file.
